The “ticking time bomb”
gambit is a sure way to establish when someone is trying to pull the
wool over your eyes. You’ll recall this was how the advocates of torture argued: what if the terrorists had a nuclear device designed to go off
in the heart of, say, New York City’s Times Square, and only torture
could pry its location out of a captured detainee? Surely then we’d
ditch our squeamishness about methods employed by the Gestapo and the
KGB. American exceptionalism has its limits, after all.

Although the ticking time bomb
scenario is most conducive to the realm of foreign affairs – where
bombs, and other ticking devices, are largely to be found, along with
a host of enemies ready to set them off – we hear variations of it
on the home front as well. The current debate over the debt ceiling
is a perfect example, with the Obama administration and its media shills claiming that if Congress doesn’t raise it, an economic apocalypse
is imminent. This is a very clever way of shifting blame for the ongoing
financial crisis, one which may very well come to a head as Congress
votes. Never mind that the more immediate cause of another lurch into
the vale of depression is likely to be economic chaos imported from
the Eurozone – American narcissism, a national malady, deludes us
into thinking it’s all about us. The fate of the world must always rest
on our shoulders.

In any event, on the debt limit
issue, the stance of those who want a more peaceful, less interventionist
foreign policy is – or ought to be – clear. If we raise the debt
ceiling, we are, in effect, giving the War Party a blank check. The
pressure to cut military spending will end, and the spigot will be turned
back on. Calls to cut back on military operations overseas – coming,
these days, from fiscal conservatives as well as the usual liberal-left
suspects – will have much less resonance in Washington.

There is another point, however,
that needs making: the debt ceiling, aside from its legislative impact,
is a powerful symbolic construct. It puts a ceiling on the ambitions of our officials, and, while not precisely teaching them humility, tethers
them to reality. It is the American government saying: There are limits
to our hubris.

The official US military budget
– some $650 billion – is just what we know about: how many multi-billions
are hidden in the CIA’s “black budget” is anyone’s guess. Suffice
to say, however, that most of this is spent maintaining our overseas
empire, including some 1,000-plus bases – and it is not counting the
trillion or so we’ve already spent and will spend in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Estimates for the Iraq war alone total as much as $3 trillion.

The total outlays are considerably
increased when we consider opportunity costs: that is, the costs of
diverting resources that might have been used elsewhere more productively.
Imagine if we’d taken that trillion bucks that went to sate the neocons’
blood-lust by, say, investing it in new energy sources, or the latest
advances in medicine or computer science. In this sense, the cost of
maintaining our overseas empire is incalculably high.

It’s true that cutting the
military alone isn’t going to bring the federal budget into balance:
but many of the so-called “social” programs defended by the liberal-left
are ways of keeping the population pacified, in much the same way US
“aid” bribes foreign peoples into submission. The theory is that
the commoners will keep quiet as long as they’re getting a free lunch.
However, what happens when the tab arrives and no one can pay it? That’s
the moment we are fast approaching. Increasing the debt ceiling will,
at best, only delay the day of reckoning: at worst, it will provoke
it.

The US spends more on “defense”
than all other countries on earth combined, and yet Congress recently
voted to increase that sum – proof, as if any were needed, that all
the rhetoric over the debt, the debt ceiling, and the fiscal crisis
we face is just a lot of wind. If our politicians were serious about
cutting spending, we would get out of Iraq and Afghanistan, dismantle
our European and Pacific bases, cut the military budget by half – and
still retain our military edge by a comfortable margin.

Don’t hold your breath waiting
for that to happen. As a forgotten prophet, the conservative writer
Garet Garrett, once wryly observed: the American empire is an empire
of a new type, one in which nothing comes in and everything goes out.
Whether this is a policy of altruism, or megalomania, I’ll leave for
future historians decide – as they troll among the ruins.

201203603040 Responseshttp%3A%2F%2Foriginal.antiwar.com%2Fjustin%2F2011%2F07%2F12%2Fthe-debt-ceiling-and-the-warfare-state%2FThe+Debt+Ceiling+and+the+Warfare+State2011-07-13+06%3A00%3A05Justin+Raimondohttp%3A%2F%2Foriginal.antiwar.com%2F%3Fp%3D2012036030 to “The Debt Ceiling and the Warfare State”

How can anyone look at what's going on objectively and not conclude that we're being led idiots? These sociopaths are incapable of admitting error. They'd rather drive the country off a cliff than change course. They make the late Roman emperors look wise by comparison.

It does seem like everyone who's anyone in DC is totally out of touch with reality. We commoners, however, are getting angrier by the minute, and this insanity will end, either in renewal (hopefully) or ruin.

Kenny Rogers – The Gambler http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzfCgycpoqs
Free lunch will be over for Americans when interest rates sky rocket to 15% and above. Let's not kid ourselves,USA dollar is just ink/paper but oil has substance and worth.Having control of countries containing vast amounts of oil–assures USA/EU out of the debt problem. Uncle Sam (hired thug and gambler) is betting his last dollars on the military/CIA controling middle east oil wealth

Why would interest rates rise…??? After all, the FED does NOT need to print any notes, they can just log on to accounts and add zeros… HHHHMMMMMMMmmmmm How many zeros do we need to add today..?? The problem is that the Congress and the President cannot create more and more luftgelt. The constitution requires the money be appropriated NOT created and that is "their" problem. There are a few scenarios when the gov WANTS to raise rates.. Run away inflation and labor shortages from an overheated economy is one, but the less desirable and FAR more dangerous scenario is the dollar losing value against other major currencies….. Think Mexico.,. The Peso went from 12.5 to the dollar to 3,071.00
See: http://intl.econ.cuhk.edu.hk/exchange_rate_regime…

They raise rates to attract investors to be IN dollars… "AAhhh, you think our currency is worthless..?? Here, we will give you more of it if you invest with us…!" It's all smoke and mirrors like fractional reserve banking…. House of cards, just waiting for a gust from the right direction…!!!

The evil neolib/neocon establishment is in a terrible bind. It wants to continue plundering America’s good credit to wage pointless wars for Empire, Israel, and the Fed (monopoly money-printing rights), but the Chinese are no longer interested in buying U.S. debt. The Chinese, like the tea partiers, have figured out that the evil neolib/neocons are using the unlimited credit to cut the throats of their opposition, rivals, and enemies.

The elites don’t care about average Americans any more than they care about the Chinese. They just want to keep them bought off and pacified long enough to set up a totalitarian leviathan where all resistance will be futile.

Don’t fool yourselves…there is absolutely ZERO good will in establishment Washington today, just sociopath elites and their blinkered, bought off, useful idiot constituency that is advancing them the credit they are using to hang it.

Really, I think the misunderstanding is that those who have the power to make decisions have completely different priorities than the rest of us.

It may seem cynical (I always have been to some extent) but if you were not concerned about this country or this society, but with your own (and your circle), why would you care what happens to the rest of 'us'?

If you can afford to live well,and anywhere, then the failure or poverty of 300 million people is probably not high on your needs pyramid. They are not idiots, although the facade they maintain with about 535 useful idiots might make it seem so – to those who believe in it.

At this point, self-government is not possible. It is more like superstition than anything else.

As long as you believe it and continue to send it money, and as long as you are 'investing' in funds, from which offshoring multinationals, defense contractors and other entities (which gain competitive advantage through their puppets in congress) profit from it .. then what can be said about it?

And, after all, what is the difference whether the thief in your house is a republican or a democrat, or a communist or a muslim anyway? Shouldn't he be shot and buried without a funeral?

When was it ever a ceiling? That is just a dream to peddle to the idiots (us) who pay the bills.

The first step to correcting any problem is to stop pretending and recognize that one exists. Until the American public recognizes that "their" leaders, appointed and elected, are not their leaders, no solution can occur. What passes for leadership and governance in Washington are nothing more than pointless mummery.

Rates will rise b/c in order to mke those ledger entries someone other than the Fed will have to buy the T-Bills. When the market says the default risk premium on US debt is non-zero that's when rates will start to rise. Foreign investors are already not buying at the same rate they were, hence QE and QE2 (and coming soon QE3), but that also has limits.
The Fed's between the rock of contracting credit markets and exploding debt servicing.

in response to steven h…"we are led by idiots" ….when last i looked this country was a democracy that allows almost all adults the vote…..we get the leadership we want…to paraphrase pogo…..we have met the idiots and they are us

The US debt and deficits are unstainable. The defense spending is surreal. World war III is thought as
salvation by the criminal neocons. Why not a human economic system (green and just for all mankind). .May God help us all.

The problem: there are no consequences for the govt elite. Whatever the country suffers, they will still get their paychecks and perks. We desperately need to examine our form of government at the most fundamental constitutional level, and rework it to address those problems we have discovered over the years. National survival and modernity requires a US Constitution v. 2.0.0.

I'm sad to say I agree. It's unlikely (but not impossible — the Soviet Union did it) for an empire in the grip of militarism to voluntarily demilitarize. I voted for McCain/Palin for just that reason. (And I'm a hard-left progressive.) I figured they would "break" the system — ie bring about its collapse — faster than the dems. The sooner it's broken, the sooner we can rebuild.

If, on the other hand, someone can employ internet tools to recapture the government by electoral means, well,…that would be preferable.

The American people however, have been so profoundly mal-educated that I fear only the savage consequences of catastrophe can shock them back to reality.

I see people trying to solve problems that they don't understand all the time. The worst of it is that some of them don't even try to understand. Just throw 'something' at it (like an ignorant savage throwing the blood of a slain child at the shadows in the forest – for protection from lightning).

I wish there were some magic – to help them understand that they need to understand, or someplace to go to avoid the descent into darkness.

In an illusion called two party system, voting is merely a quaint old custom. But voters still fall for left-righ-center illusions all the time. For example, it should be ABSOLUTELY clear that the only way to influence the spending patterns of the elite is to prevent them from touching SOCIAL SECURITY. This, so called "entitlement" is a trust fund. As Social Security Fund is SOLVENT through 2035 at least, it is essential that politicians know that we are not buying their "brave" efforts to save a fund that is OVERFUNDED by about a trillion dollars, collected throughout nineties to pay for baby boomer era. Let the politicians increase the ceiling — they will do it anyway — and then spend on their imperial illusions. Cutting contribution-funded programs is a smoke screen to make people feel that the "austerity" is patriotic duty, and they are just being "brave". When will people finally see through this nonsense?

Raising the debt ceiling might mean a blank check for the military but it also might mean my wife's considerable medical bills will be paid through Medicare and it might mean I can pay the bills through SS. If Justin wants to join up with the Tea Party and have the government stop making payments on its obligations, fine–but don't expect us who are being "pacified" through social programs to go along with him.

The U.S. is hardly in bad shape fiscally, its global empire most certainly not on the verge of collapse. In fact, U.S. sovereign debt is lower than it was during World War II, as pointed out by Dean Baker:

"…How about that $14.3tn figure for the debt ceiling? That's a really big number, really scary. So is just about every number connected with the United States budget. We are a huge country with a huge economy. Competent reporters would focus on this being about 90% of US GDP.

Is that big? Well, the debt to GDP ratio was over 110% after the second world war. The United Kingdom had debt to GDP ratios of more than 100% for much of the 19th century, as it was establishing itself as the world's pre-eminent industrial power…."http://www.alternet.org/media/151601/stealing_fro…

So overall U.S. government debt has declined over a seven decade period where the U.S. has become by far and away the largest empire in history. Meanwhile, Washington has been quite successful at keeping the former colonies in a state of defacto colonial status. The American Empire isn't going anywhere anytime soon, unfortunately.

"The theory is that the commoners will keep quiet as long as they’re getting a free lunch…."

Social Security and Medicare are paid for by way of taxes that are deducted from every paycheck everybody earns at work, so these benefits are not "free lunches". Since Justin, unlike, say, Friedman, is acknowledging the existence of the free lunch, then let's be honest about what it actually is. The free lunch is extortionate fees, interest, rents, plus the freeing of business to lie to consumers and extort any price they want from them.

As far as winning wars we do not have a military edge the US military cannot fight it's way out of a guerrilla paper bag and has not won a guerrilla war in 109 years (the Philippine Insurrection of 1902). Guerrillas own warfare and state militaries almost always lose to them, but this has nothing to do with money spending. Also the US military does not fight with it's hands tied, in the Vietnam war for example it dropped 3 and 1/2 million tons of bombs on North Vietnam, more than both sides dropped in World War 2.

Hanoi is paying the debt of the Saigon regime. Hanoi surrendered in 1993 when it "agreed", after 18 years of economic warfare, and the continuation of Washington's war against Vietnam via China and
Cambodia, the debts of the hated Saigon regime. The U.S. won a more decisive victory in Indochina than it did over Japan. Hardly surprising given the balance of the forces in that war. No poor, peasant society can win a war against the U.S. That's just not possible.

Even without raising the debt ceiling the Federal Government would have more than enough money to pay for things like SS. Your SS is already being cut via inflation btw, I hope you have another source of income besides SS

"Look here kid if you don't take out more debt how can you ever have a good credit score"? Personally I would be much more worried about what the other countries think about our skyrocketing debt than what moodies or moonies or whatever thinks about us. If we get our house in order China,Russia and Japan just might decide to hold our dollars for a little longer, instead of dumping our dollar and our bonds and bills.

My guess is that this is what this farce is all about. The congress and the president know that the world is getting a little worried about our spending and they don't want to get caught flat footed holding worthless IOU's. In the end we will still add to the debt, but the people and the world leaders just might think we mean business.

The added bonus is that the people get conned into going further in debt and they still believe the whole good cop bad cop routine.

Actually, seeing as neocons are so pro-big government, neocons are all trojan horses for the Democratic Party. Didn't Bush and his buddies want to bring democracy to the unwashed masses? Didn't the Democrat Woodrow Wilson bring that concept to America calling it "making the world safe for Democracy"? Didn't he give America the federal reserve? Wasn't it progressives like Wilson and T. Roosevelt who basically gave corporations much more power by strangling the free market so Big Business would forever have an advantage as well as a cozy tie with government? Is it a surprise that FDR was a great admirer of Benito Mussolini's fascism?
Why don't you rid yourself of the absurd illusion that there is a difference between the Democratic wing and the Republican wing of the Big Government party? All authoritarian politicians are exactly the same: drunk on power and full of narcissism.

That's like saying that paying men who wield bats for "protection" makes you part of the mob. Stop being ridiculous. There is no such thing as a "we", unless everyone fully supports something, which is not the case. A lot of people pay taxes because they prefer it over jail or the bullet (if they would insist on not paying).
Living in a system where most OTHER people support an idiotic government, does not make *everyone* an idiot any more than it makes everyone a warmonger. Despite what stupid collectivists think, there is no such thing as guilt by nationality.

Call the new system the "Debt Skyscraper" and just add floors as necessary (no ceiling, see?) Give the congresscritters full rein and bring the system down quicker. Easier to rebuild something sensible afterward.

Of 435 members of Congress, 261 are, by last count, millionaires. All are paid a tidy sum of $174,000 No wonder they don't relate to Main St.

The problem is America is straining under the weight of humanity.
The American Troops in Germany have gone from Occupiers to a economic necessity in German cities.
The troops in Iraq will go from over paid Hero's to unemployed Wogs ready to explode because most will not be deprogrammed.
Timothy McVie the Oklahoma bomber was ex Military, Lee Harvey Oswald, Military. The idiot who shot him was ex Military, etc.etc.
The problem is American War Lord business leaders have taken their businesses to China and India, while the American hero's who fought to make America the next Empire are left unemployed. The only thing left in America is the Weapons of War Industries and the Share Market, Banking Industries.
The problem is and was that the Americans want to fight the wars, use American made weapons and then get someone else to pay for it.

Germany was meant to pay for WW1, Adolf told Roosevelt to get stuffed. 8 countries had to pay. England sold its entire Gold reserves 27 million pounds worth to America, that's how the Yanks intended to get themselves out of the Great Depression, the Great Depression that an American share market scandal created. Adolf told the Yanks to jump and Lithuania had nothing, so 6 payed two didn't.

150 million people dead in two World Wars, the first one was a lie and the second one came about because of the lies told in the first.

Germany owed the English War Lords 10 Billion pounds for WW1 and in or after the 1930 there was something like 1200 of theirs to 1 of England's so multiply 10 Billion by that. Would we have payed such a ransom for something that was a lie.

Australia even made a request to get money out of Germany, England wrote back and said you have to pay us some huge amount for carting your soldiers and horses around, mate any one would think England had come to rescue Australia.

The world is struggling to stave of revolutions brought on by poverty which is created by too much breeding, by working class trash that can and will never be able to guaranty a job for their kids, yet are hoping someone else will and every one else his exploiting this wealth through consumerism bull. The problem is no one wants to pay all the unemployed working class trash so that they can afford to consume anything other then pay rent, food, Grog and gamble.

The human race has lost its way because we were told far too many lies 80 + years ago

[…] its largesse, buy political support from various constituencies, and justify a debt measured in the trillions. Short of flinging wads of bills from airplanes and showering the populace with Federal Reserve […]

Justin Raimondo is the editorial director of Antiwar.com, and a senior fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute. He is a contributing editor at The American Conservative, and writes a monthly column for Chronicles. He is the author of Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement [Center for Libertarian Studies, 1993; Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2000], and An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard [Prometheus Books, 2000].